The Halloween Tree

Tom whirled to look at the faintly shuddering windows. Moonlit reflections trembled in the glass like schools of disturbed silver minnows. Then the front door gave a shake, a twist of its knob, a grimace of its Marley knocker, and flung itself wide.

The wind made by the suddenly opening door almost knocked the boys off the porch. They seized one another’s elbows, yelling.

Then the darkness within the house inhaled. A wind sucked through the gaping door. It pulled at the boys, dragging them across the porch. They had to lean back so as not to be snatched into the deep dark hall. They struggled, shouted, clutched the porch rails. But then the wind ceased.

Darkness moved within darkness.

Inside the house, a long way off, someone was walking toward the door. Whoever it was must have been dressed all in black for they could see nothing but a pale white face drifting on the air.

An evil smile came and hung in the doorway before them.

Behind the smile, the tall man hid in shadow. They could see his eyes now, small pinpoints of green fire in little charred pits of sockets, looking out at them.

“Well,” said Tom. “Er—trick or treat?”

“Trick?” said the smile in the dark. “Treat?”

“Yes, sir.”

The wind played a flute in a chimney somewhere; an old song about time and dark and far places. The tall man shut up his smile like a bright pocketknife.

“No treats,” he said. “Only—trick!”

The door slammed!

The house thundered with showers of dust.

Dust puffed out the rainspout again, in fluffs, like an emergence of downy cats.

Dust gasped from open windows. Dust snorted from the porchboards under their feet.

The boys stared at the locked shut-fast front door. The Marley knocker was not scowling now, but smiling an evil smile.

“What’s he mean?” asked Tom. “No treats, only trick?”

Backing off around the side of the house they were astonished at the sounds it made. A whole rigamarole of whispers, squeaks, creaks, wails, and murmurs, and the night wind was careful to let the boys hear them all. With every step they took, the great house leaned after them with soft groans.

They rounded the far side of the house and stopped.

For there was the Tree.

And it was such a tree as they had never seen in all their lives.

It stood in the middle of a vast yard behind the terribly strange house. And this tree rose up some one hundred feet in the air, taller than the high roofs and full and round and well branched, and covered all over with rich assortments of red and brown and yellow autumn leaves.

“But,” whispered Tom, “oh, look. What’s up in that tree!”

For the Tree was hung with a variety of pumpkins of every shape and size and a number of tints and hues of smoky yellow or bright orange.

“A pumpkin tree,” someone said.

“No,” said Tom.

The wind blew among the high branches and tossed their bright burdens, softly.

“A Halloween Tree,” said Tom.

And he was right.

Chapter 5 (#ulink_d618dade-3970-5aa6-9f46-6fafe4c1f97e)

The pumpkins on the Tree were not mere pumpkins. Each had a face sliced in it. Each face was different. Every eye was a stranger eye. Every nose was a weirder nose. Every mouth smiled hideously in some new way.

There must have been a thousand pumpkins on this tree, hung high and on every branch. A thousand smiles. A thousand grimaces. And twice-times-a-thousand glares and winks and blinks and leerings of fresh-cut eyes.

And as the boys watched, a new thing happened.

The pumpkins began to come alive.

One by one, starting at the bottom of the Tree and the nearest pumpkins, candles took fire within the raw interiors. This one and then that and this and then still another, and on up and around, three pumpkins here, seven pumpkins still higher, a dozen clustered beyond, a hundred, five hundred, a thousand pumpkins lit their candles, which is to say brightened up their faces, showed fire in their square or round or curiously slanted eyes. Flame guttered in their toothed mouths. Sparks leaped out their ripe-cut ears.

And from somewhere two voices, three or maybe four voices whispered and chanted a kind of singsong or old sea shanty of the sky and time and the earth turning over into sleep. The rain-spouts blew spiderdust:

“It’s big, it’s broad …”

A voice smoked from the rooftop chimney:

“It’s broad, it’s bright …

It fills the sky of All Hallows’ Night …”

From open windows somewhere, cobwebs drifted:

“The strangest sight you’ve ever seen.

The Monster Tree on Halloween.”

The candles flickered and flared. The wind crooned in, the wind crooned out the pumpkin mouths, tuning the song:

“The leaves have burned to gold and red

The grass is brown, the old year dead,

But hang the harvest high, Oh see!

The candle constellations on the Halloween Tree!”

Tom felt his mouth stir like a small mouse, wanting to sing: